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Monday, August 13, 2018

I'm looking at the the industries that make up the telecom sector in this phase of this top-down analysis, .

The INVRS software divides the sector into three industries: wireless, major and specialty. The sector has close to 500 securities.

When I create a portfolio for analysis, I use the "advanced search" feature on the research dashboard page which gives a list of every publicly company in North American in the particular industry and sector I'm looking at. I then weed out micro-cap companies and ones not trading on an American exchange (this is a US analysis). From this smaller list I read the profiles of each company and remove those who operate in a different jurisdiction.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Below are 22 sector graphs based on the S&P Total Market Indices. There are a couple missing - Aerospace/Defense (which could be in capital goods) and real estate. I'll add them when they become available, but there is more than enough to start with.

I'm looking for a sector that's lagged behind the S&P, something out of favour.

I'm going to focus on Telecommunications. Energy is down relative to its starting point but Energy is highly volatile and I did an article on Energy a few months ago. I haven't put the link in this blog yet, but if you are interested you can find it on Seeking Alpha.

If you click into the three horizontal lines at the top right of the chart there's the option to get a data table. Using that I can see on March 10, 2014 the first data point for Telecommunication, the index had a value of 1335.27 and the S&P had a value of 1877.17. On August 7, 2018 the values were 1417.34 and 2858.48 respectively. In that almost 4.5 year period, the S&P gained 102% or annualized 16.9% and Telecommunications gained 41% or annualized 7.9%.

(It's actually still a good return it's only when it's compared to the S&P does it look anemic).

In the next installment I'll look at the industries and the constituents within the sector to see if anything looks good.

If you have any questions, please leave it in the comments sections below and I'll get to it as soon as possible.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

Part of the article series was a regression analysis against an S&P/TSX Global Gold Index, which is based on the price of the underlying member stocks. I'd change that and use a better gold price indicator, like the gold monthly price supplied by index mundi.

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are two areas that hold great possibility in the field of finance and investing.

Right now there are AI driven ETFs that consume huge amounts of data, learn from it and and then constantly re-balance a portfolio of securities designed to out-perform the market. It's a fascinating frontier.

How will INVRS adopt this technology while still remaining true to our vision of empowering human analysts?

INVRS was founded on the notion of using technology to automate or make some of the more grueling, time consuming tasks easier, but still keep a human in charge of the creative elements of analysis.

Here are some of the avenues we may develop or are developing currently:

1) Allow users to back-test models to determine efficacy across stocks, industries and the broad market. We expect that our users will find some of their models work better under certain circumstances and with certain industries. This knowledge will help them select the "right tool for the job".

2) Allow users to feed INVRS their own data sets for analytical purposes.

3) Expand the tool set beyond financial parameters to include language recognition.

4) Expand the tool set to include a programmable AI or machine learning interface giving the user the ability to direct the process and outcome.

These are some of the ideas we have. We'd love to hear what you think. Leave your ideas in comments section below or better still, sign-up for a free-trial at INVRS and then let your imagination run wild.

About INVRS

INVRS is investment research software for analysts, bloggers and sophisticated DIY investors who want full creative control over their analysis process including the ability to create their own models, ratios and regressions.